Challenge Program on Water and Food: Water and Food Monthly

This issue of Water and Food Monthly brings you news on topics gaining strong momentum in the CPWF. These include a capacity building profile on Zimbabwean master’s student Luckson Katsi, a feature on the Most Significant Change Stories collected earlier this year, and an interview with CPWF researcher Pay Dreschel on the benefits of knowledge sharing and more…

Water and Food Monthly has a New Editor!

CPWF welcomes Felicity Woodhams to the team as communications assistant, charged with resurrecting this newsletter after it fell by the wayside during International Forum on Water and Food (IFWF) activities in the last quarter of 2006.

Felicity has completed her studies in Resource and Environmental Science at the Australian National University and has experience in a number of communications positions both in the private and public sector. Contact Felicity with your comments and story suggestions at f.woodhams@cgiar.org

Message from the Program Coordinator

Jonathan Woolley

In this first newsletter of 2007, it’s a pleasure to look forward to an exciting year of work together in which we expect to see further evolution of the CPWF. Recently, much of the energy of the Management Team and group of coordinators has been focused on debating potential strategies for the second phase of the CPWF. Although the commencement of a potential second phase is still nearly two years away, we need to present our plans to an external review team around mid year so as to enter a process that we hope will result in a go ahead for our plans from the next CGIAR AGM.

In this, we have been fortunate to be able to build on the opportunities generated by the CPWF International Forum on Water and Food held in Vientiane in November 2006. Participants generally agree that the energy generated by interactions of a wide range of people at the Forum, including about half of whom had had no previous contact with the CPWF, opened many possibilities for future work together. This was also evident when I visited CPWF research sites in the Limpopo and Volta river basins in the second half of 2006.

Often I find the projects that are most exciting to visit are those that are exploring links in research or capacity building with other projects inside and outside the CPWF. We suspect that creating these opportunities for "cross-linking" people and ideas is one of the most important contributions of the first phase of the CPWF and that it will be a key to the successful design of the second phase. In that spirit, may I wish us all much success in 2007.

Capacity Building Profile: Luckson Katsi, Zimbabwe

CPWF Project: Multiple-Use Water Supply Systems for Enhanced Land and Water Productivity, Rural Livelihoods and Gender Equity

Capacity building is an important component of the CPWF’s work, focusing on building the capacity of researchers, as learners, appliers and promoters of integrated scientific approaches, whilst assisting them to evaluate and enhance water productivity for food production, livelihood generation, and ecosystem services.

Luckson Katsi completed his degree in civil engineering at the University of Zimbabwe’s Integrated Water Resource Management Department. He is one of ten Master’s students and one PhD student in Zimbabwe supported by the networks and research development available through the CPWF. His recently completed Master’s research was conducted in conjunction with the CPWF project Multiple-Use Water Supply Systems for Enhanced Land and Water Productivity, Rural Livelihoods and Gender Equity, in the Limpopo Basin.

Multiple water use supply systems have been recognized as one of the most significant but largely untapped contributors to increased land and water productivity and gender equity. The damaging impacts of single water use supply systems are particularly evident in countries like Zimbabwe, where water services are typically implemented with a narrow, sub-sectoral focus. These are not only inflexible to users’ demands but also jeopardize the ability to improve livelihoods with effective and sustainable rural water supply systems.

Luckson Katsi doing field work in the Pfungwe communal area, Zimbabwe

With this in mind Luckson developed a pertinent Master’s project entitled Assessing factors which affect multiple uses of water and their impact on the sustainability of rural water supply sources. Luckson’s supervisors included Japson Siwadi, a hydrogeologist and civil engineering lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and Edward Guzha, of the Mvaramanzi Trust NGO, a Challenge Program collaborating partner. The research examined some of the multiple water use issues characteristic of the developing world, including an increasing demand for water needed for small-scale productive uses such as back yard gardening and livestock as well as drinking, cooking, washing and other perceived domestic needs.

\Major findings of the research outlined various water usage regimes, water sources and technologies currently in place. These were then assessed for factors promoting or limiting multiple water uses. Luckson found that technologies designed to inhibit multiple uses were common, outlining an importance for employing new, more accommodating equipment. For example, bore holes without a complete set of head-works and lacking concrete slabs could inhibit using these sources for frequent domestic chores, such as clothes washing and food preparation.

He also observed that policy and institutional arrangements could greatly affect the availability of multiple use water systems. For example, the Integrated Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Programme (IRWSSP) was developed to ensure the availability of clean water for domestic uses via communal boreholes and deep wells. However, in some parts of rural Zimbabwe, restrictions are placed on using such facilities for anything other than for domestic purposes.
Since completion of his Master’s, Luckson has been working with the Association for Water and Rural Development (AWARD, South Africa) in their Securing Water to Enhance Local Livelihoods (SWELL) project. He has done consultancy work for the United Nations and has attended numerous forums and workshops throughout the globe on gender and water resource management issues. He also represents Zimbabwe in the Young Water Action Team, based in the Netherlands.

Luckson’s work in the Limpopo not only provides an example of how capacity building is assisting students to conduct research and build networks but also demonstrates how their involvement greatly enhances CPWF projects.

Small Reservoirs Project Applies New Research Perspectives

Outreach activities at the end of last year proved fruitful for the Small Reservoirs Project by providing exciting new research perspectives. During the Stockholm World Water Week, 2006 the project team presented their research findings at their own Marketplace, initiating discussion among 36 research colleagues. Since then, the Small Reservoirs Project team, led by Dr. Marc Andreini has worked to develop 10 key points which gleaned from the discussions, designed to improve the management of such systems.

Downstream reservoirs and the uplands surrounding them should be managed in concert. In particular, when considering the various management strategies available to those with access to the reservoir, the income and livelihood improvements that result from the use of the watershed above the dam should be included in the analyses.
As dam construction is usually done without formal engineering supervision technical support for communities needs to be increased. Arrangements should be found to improve dam safety and reduce the structures' vulnerability to flooding.
To assure that the provision of small reservoirs improves the livelihoods of the people they are intended to serve, developers should pay attention to who does and does not have access to the reservoirs. In addition, access should be secure enough to facilitate long term investment.
Where appropriate, reservoir developers should consider how to provide equitable compensation for upstream and downstream producers by the users of the reservoirs.
Strategies should be developed for the use of water stored in silted up structures.
Easier methods for bathymetry measurements should be implemented. In the past reservoir depth measures were taken by inserting a stadia rod into the reservoirs until it reached the bottom. Marketplace participants expressed the need to find a method that was easy for anybody conducting bathymetry studies to use.
Safety procedures and inspection protocols should be tailored to local communities. Locals could then inform the authorities responsible for dam integrity of any safety concerns following regular inspections. If warranted more in depth inspections could be done by the authorities’ engineers and appropriate actions taken.
Environmental flows and the impact of the reservoirs on downstream ecosystems and communities should be taken into account when reservoirs are planned and built.
Water quality information should be used when considering livelihood impacts on fish production and ecosystems.
Cross basin analyses should be conducted by comparing and contrasting the practical implications of the results of research in each basin.

The small reservoirs project conducts research is conducted in the Volta, Limpopo and Sao Francisco River Basins.

Most Significant Change Stories

To help CPWF develop an understanding of factors affecting the success of our research, development impact and partnerships, CPWF project leaders, basin coordinators and theme leaders were asked, in January 2007, to share stories from within their research about areas of most significant change. Fifty stories were compiled based on the following two questions:

Here, we feature one Most Significant Change story that highlights the targeted, multi-scaled and adaptive approaches characteristic of CPWF projects.

Increasing Food and Income Security in Orissa, India
CPWF Project 7: Improving productivity in salt affected areas

High salt content in soil is an escalating problem, resulting in low productivity and land degradation in vast areas. An estimated 12 million hectares of land in Asia alone are highly saline, a figure that is expanding due to improper management regimes. Rice is a crop particularly suitable for rehabilitating salt affected soils as it can be grown under flooded conditions and has high genetic potential for salt tolerance. Project 7 concentrates on conventional and biotechnological breeding methods to accelerate the development and implementation of salt tolerant rice varieties.

These efforts have greatly affected the coastal villages of Kamilio and Chaulia in Orissa, India, which face a number of environmental barriers to food and income security. Barriers include seawater ingression, shallow saline water tables, erratic rainfall and extreme weather events, creating an intensely saline environment.

The Project 7 research team, headed by principal investigator Dr. Abdel Ismail, assisted these communities with adopting salt tolerant modern varieties of rice for the wet season, along with a resilient sunflower crop for use during the dry season. Community participation enabled immediate feedback regarding the new rice varieties and farmers were encouraged to conduct their own experiments using their preferred level of management.

The villages of Kamilio and Chaulia experienced increased annual yields resulting in enough rice for the entire year, with some farmers reporting yields of up to 4t per ha compared to the previous variety’s 1.5t per ha. Farmers also gained new products through crop diversification, with the sunflower plants being used for cooking oil and fuel as well as stock and fish feed.

Details submitted by: Thelma Paris and Steve Zolvinski on behalf of Dr. Abdel Ismail (Principal investigator) and Dr. DPSingh, Dr. Sanjoy Saha, Dr. K.R. Mahata of Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI), Cuttack.

Interview: CPWF Researcher Pay Drechsel talks about Knowledge Sharing

Dr. Pay Drechsel is the principal investigator on the CPWF project: Safeguarding Public Health Concerns, Livelihoods and Productivity in Wastewater Irrigated Urban and Peri-urban Vegetable Farming in Ghana, a research initiative led by the University in Kumasi, Ghana.

In this interview he talks about his views on knowledge sharing approaches and his conversion from skeptic to believer when his team used the ‘open space’ approach to facilitate a potentially difficult discussion between members of the municipality and peri-urban farmers on the issue of safe wastewater use in agriculture. Knowledge sharing activities are helping to understand the farmers’ concerns, generate dialogue between institutions and most importantly arrive at a shared understanding of the various dimensions of the problem and its possible solutions.

At the project’s first knowledge sharing workshop, various groups including farmers from vegetable farmers associations, researchers and members of the municipality got together in an open forum to discuss issues and possible solutions. All stakeholders were given an opportunity to express their views on what interventions were needed to promote the safe use of wastewater in urban and peri-urban agriculture. Dr. Drechsel was asked about the knowledge sharing process when Sanjini de Silva met with him last year.

How did you become interested in ‘knowledge sharing’ as a concept and what’s your practical experience so far?

When I first I heard about knowledge sharing it sounded interesting, but also used a lot of buzz words. At that time I didn’t know how we could actually benefit from it. It was only this year that we received some initial funds to add value to the project you mentioned. Still I was quite skeptical at this early stage. More out of curiosity, I agreed to co-moderate the first knowledge sharing workshop with my colleagues from research and we extended our invitation beyond our normal project partners to wholesalers, farmers, municipal authorities, networks and associations. We realized that there is a lot of knowledge that we are not yet capitalizing on that would help to link our outcomes with the impact we want to have.

The activities helped us simultaneously envision and define a process to improve the safety of the consumers. Then we realized that actually to reach the vision we need even more partners than we thought, and to include these partners in each project phase. In our case, the consumers, the farmers, and the market people—the wholesalers the retailers, plus authorities and media had to get together from the start.

It’s the communication that’s crucial. However you want to do it, you have to consider that it is very important to create something like an ‘end-user communication process’ for any kind of project. The end-user communication process reminds us whose benefit we are actually working for, so that we tailor our plans and objectives to the perception and wishes of those who are going to use it. Standard research approaches entail going to a farm and speaking to farmers, and then going to the municipality and speaking to municipal workers, but knowledge sharing brings the knowledge of various people together. And you need a workshop environment where people can express their concerns freely; allowing the farmer to confront the members of the municipality— thus there is more chance of creating mutual understanding of the problems and finding a way to go forward.

It was a very interesting discussion because for the first time we were speaking to a diverse group on issues beyond what we are normally doing. The ‘open space’ approach brought the easy atmosphere of the coffee break into the main meeting, and we were able to exchange information, locate where the gaps are and what we are going to do about them. Those present had milestones by which they wanted to measure progress, and this free exchange made us look beyond this year to the next, and more in the long term.

It doesn’t cost the world. Knowledge sharing involves people, bringing people into the process. We now know that we have to plan appropriately to bring these activities in. In most projects, what matters is only what comes in the end, we don’t make research for ourselves, we research for our target groups, and so every partner should be integrated into the process. This is the crucial part, absolutely crucial. We are now trying to turn our partners around to finance more knowledge sharing activities. Before these counted for what we called ‘dissemination’, but this used to be done without actually engaging in an end-user discussion on what we are doing.

What avenues are you considering to reach out to the farmers with the key messages of your research?

In our particular case it involves, for example, the Press. Changing the behaviour of farmers and food vendors towards ‘best (safer) practices’ requires incentives and maybe also pressure beyond the abilities of the authorities. But imagine to list certain restaurants under “safe food” in tourist guides or to reward “best farmers” in the newspapers or TV news - this can have a big impact. We are now exploring these and other options through a series of mini-workshops for our target groups using the open space approach.

Knowledge sharing lengthens the research process. Does using knowledge sharing approaches in research projects compromise time?

Yes it does, but in any project you should aim for a compromise between the time you allocate for the research, and the time for involving your boundary partners and investing in knowledge sharing. In the end it’s about doing a good job so that people can make use of what we researchers produce.

Scaling in the Volta Workshop Report

A workshop in Accra at the end of last year generated important ideas about how to achieve basin- and global-scale impacts from CPWF research.

The workshop was organized by the Volta Basin Secretariat as a follow-up to the Akosombo Impact Pathways and Most Significant Change Workshop held in January, 2006.

Participants from the CPWF Volta Basin projects met for two-and-a-half days to track progress along their projects' impact pathways and identify mechanisms and next steps to achieve basin and global scale impacts. Participants identified that their projects often lacked the resources and time necessary to co-develop the outputs of their research with the intended users. This is because project plans and budgets developed before a project is underway can rarely fully anticipate opportunities for impact that occur once a project begins, and so do not have the flexibility to respond. Participants identified the need for funding flexibility to allow targeted co-development of promising technologies and processes. Such a mechanism could make the difference between increasing adoption and impact, and the outputs of CPWF research remaining "on-the-shelf".

Participants identified important synergies between projects. For example, three projects agreed to promote their fisheries components together. These components range from dug-outs to small reservoirs to large scale fish production in rivers and dams. There was also agreement that a promising crop storage and credit scheme developed by a project in Burkina Faso would be presented at an important research seminar in Ghana.

The workshop was an important milestone in the evolution of a CPWF Volta Basin Research Program and we recommend that other basins consider holding something similar.

Boru Douthwaite, Leader BFP-Impact Assessment Project and CIAT Scientist b.douthwaite@cgiar.org
Winston Andah Volta Basin Coordinator and CSIR / WRI Scientist, Winston Andah weiandah@africaonline.com.gh

Forum Follow-up

The Forum, held in Vientiane in November, was designed to build on the synthesis work carried out in CPWF, open it up to debate and extend the focus into the future.

The Session Reports, Policy Panel Position Paper, Forum Position Paper and the Vientiane Statement are all available via the Forum website

Whats On?

World Bank Water Week
Washington DC, 26 February – 2 March 2007
Annette Huber-Lee, CPWF Theme Leader for The Global and National Food and Water Systems will give a presentation on “Introducing the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food: Research on Water Productivity and Poverty Alleviation”. Program coordinator Jonathan Woolley will also be in attendance.

CPWF Consortium Steering Committee Meeting
California, UC Davis. 6 – 10 March 2007
The CPWF consortium steering committee is having its annual meeting to discuss the progress of the Challenge Program and to consider the proposed research strategy for the second phase.

Water Poverty Mapping, Mini Workshop
Ghana, CSIR Water Research Institute, Accra, 7 – 9 March 2007
A total of 11 people from CSIRO, CEH, CIAT, VOLTA, IRD, CPWF and other partners will be attending the three day workshop dealing with the Bayesian Approach for Water Poverty Mapping.

Borlaug Leadership Enhancement and Agriculture Program (LEAP)
LEAP is available for graduate students from developing countries who demonstrate strong leadership potential in the field of animal agriculture and associated topics of human nutrition, economic growth, environment and policy. LEAP is associated with the CGIAR gender and diversity program.
Applications close: 15 March 2007
To find out more go to: http://leap.ucdavis.edu

Pilot Competitive Grants Program, funded by the CGIAR
To support innovative partnerships and projects jointly conducted by Civil Society Organisations (CSO’s) and CGIAR centres. The program offers CSO’s and CGIAR colleagues new opportunities to develop, apply, evaluate and share innovative approaches for making their partnerships even more effective
Submission of concept notes deadline: 15 March 2007
To find out more go to: www.cgiar.org/csos/cso_cgiar_grant_program.html

World Water Day, Coping with Water Scarcity
Worldwide, 22 March 2007
This year's theme highlights the increasing significance of water scarcity worldwide and the need for increased integration and cooperation to ensure sustainable, efficient and equitable management of scarce water resources, both at international and local levels.
To find out more got to: http://www.unwater.org/wwd07/flashindex.html

International Training Program in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM)
Sweden, 6 – 28 August 2007 and in LAO PDR, 19 – 30 November 2007
The objective of the training programe is to support and stimulate the development of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the participants’ home countries, and to encourage the participants to be involved in and contribute to networking on IWRM.
Applications Close: 4 April 2007
To find out more go to: http://www.siwi.org/courses/coursesgeneral.html

Sustainable Urban Water and Sanitation Integration Processes Training Program
Sweden, 5 – 23 November 2007
The sustainable urban water and sanitation training program is instigated by the Swedish International Development corporation Agency (SIDA), in conjunction with the Division of Water Resources and Engineering department at Lund University, Sweden. Applications close: 30 April 2007
To find out more go to (www.education.lu.se/sida/water.)

CPWF Welcomes...

Following a Steering Committee decision to fund theme leaders’ positions full-time, three CGIAR centres decided to identify new staff to these positions and those appointments are now complete. The CPWF would like to extend a warm welcome to the following new theme leaders:

Liz Humphries, Theme 1: Crop-Water Productivity Improvement
Sophie Nguyen-Khoa, Theme 3: Aquatic Ecosystems and Fisheries
Annette Huber-Lee, Theme 5: The Global and National Food and Water Systems

Sincere thanks to Bas Bouman, Veliyil Vasu Sugunan and Claudia Ringler for their outstanding work as theme leaders and we look forward to continuing working with you in other capacities. Thanks also to Francis Gichuki (who continues as leader of Theme 4) for his valued contributions to the management team over the last two years; Annette Huber-Lee is the new theme leader representative from January 2007. And finally, Nader Haydari replaces Shahram Ashrafi as Karkheh Basin Coordinator; welcome Nader and sincere thanks to Shahram.

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Felicity Woodhams - f.woodhams@cgiar.org
The Editor, Water and Food Monthly
CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food

Welcome to the 22nd Issue of Water and Food Monthly, Jan/Feb 2007

In this Issue